SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Tuesday 20 January 2026
Welcome to the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Fourth Edition. Some sample entries appear below. Click here for the Introduction; here for what we mean by Science Fiction; here for the masthead; here for some Statistics; here for the Acknowledgments; here for the FAQ; here for advice on citations. Find entries via the search box above (more details here) or browse the menu categories in the grey bar at the top of this page.
Site updated on 19 January 2026
Sponsor of the day: Andy Richards of Cold Tonnage Books
von Däniken, Erich
(1935-2026) Swiss author of a series of purportedly nonfiction books, beginning with Erinnerungen an die Zukunft (1968; trans Michael Heron as Chariots of the Gods? 1969), which, based on a mass of often suspect and internally inconsistent data, argues that the Earth was visited by at least one Alien spacefaring race before and at the dawn of historical time; thus, for example, the Great Pyramid of ...
Adams, Scott
(1957-2026) US author and cartoonist best known for the Dilbert strip published from 1989, which when at its best superbly (in terms of concept and accuracy of Satire rather than quality of drawing) satirized contemporary office life and corporate incompetence. As with most ambitious modern comic strips, it segues frequently into sf and fantasy tropes – such as Robot office workers, wish-fulfilling ...
Ian, Janis
Working name of US musician, singer and songwriter Janis Eddy Fink (1951- ), popular in and appreciative of sf Fandom. With Mike Resnick and (anonymously) Martin H Greenberg she co-edited the Original Anthology Stars: Original Stories Based on the Songs of Janis Ian (anth 2003; exp vt Stars: The Anthology ...
Hacker, Marilyn
(1942- ) US poet, critic, editor, translator and now-retired Professor of English at the City University of New York, married to Samuel R Delany 1961-1980; the latter's Babel-17 (1966; rev 1969) includes chapter epigraphs taken from her poems. Active since 1961 – her first collection of intensely this-worldly poems, Presentation Piece (coll 1974), won a National Book Award for that year – ...
Wilson, Peter Lamborn
(1945-2022) US anarchist author and poet who also wrote as by Hakim or (for political essays) Hakim Bey. He was controversial for occasional defences of paedophilia; his first novel of genre interest, Crowstone (1983) as by Hakim, is described on the cover as "A sword and sorcery boy-love tale" (see Sword and Sorcery). As Wilson he wrote some short sf for Interzone, ...
Langford, David
(1953- ) UK author, critic, editor, publisher and sf fan, in the latter capacity recipient of 21 Hugo awards for fan writing – some of the best of his several hundred pieces are assembled as Let's Hear It for the Deaf Man (coll 1992 chap US; much exp vt The Silence of the Langford 1996; exp 2015 ebook) as Dave Langford, edited by Ben Yalow – plus five Best Fanzine Hugos ...